Workers' uphill 'Fight for 15' in a tough economy

The protest march on North Michigan Avenue early Thursday afternoon by members of the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago was probably futile.

The membership of this independent, newly formed union — drawn from retail and restaurant employees in the city's major shopping districts — marched under the banner "Fight for 15," as in $15 an hour.

Currently, their average wage is $9.80 an hour, according to event organizers. And while that's decent pay for young, entry-level workers, most of Chicago's low-wage employees are now above the age of 30 — 57 percent, according to a study released this year by the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The study also showed that 16 percent now hold college degrees, nearly twice the level in 2001, and that 57 percent live in households where all the income comes from low-wage jobs, compared with 46 percent in 2001.

"We believe that people who work hard for a living should make enough to support themselves, their families and their neighborhoods," said a one-page flier that marchers passed out. "We believe that a more equal distribution of the vast wealth that our work creates will mean a stronger economy and a more just Chicago."

For these workers, a raise to $15 an hour "would mean that they could live in neighborhoods with less crime," said coalition spokeswoman Zoe Bridges-Curry. It would mean "that their children would do better in school and have better chances for future economic security, and it would mean that their family members and neighbors would experience lower unemployment."

Even though such a salary hike would constitute a boost in pay of more than 50 percent in most cases, it would increase the merchants' overall cost of doing business by only 2.6 percent, according to the estimates of organizers.

David F. Vite, president and CEO of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, told me that he sees it differently. Raising the cost of doing business will cause owners either to raise prices or cut employee hours to remain competitive and profitable, particularly when the economy is struggling and competition from online sales has never been more fierce.

"Chicago already has the highest teen unemployment rate in the country," he said. "We have the highest number of African-Americans unemployed in the country. And this has a lot to do with Illinois' minimum wage already being more than $1 higher than the federal minimum wage.

"Sooner or later, these folks who are pushing for us to have higher costs of doing business in Chicago and Cook County are going to have to recognize that it's counterproductive. This is a losing battle for these workers because even if they win, they lose."

The same warning has been issued every time workers have risen up and demanded better treatment from their bosses, of course. And every successful labor action has had to ignore the threats of doom from management that better pay, safer conditions, eight-hour days and so on will ruin it for everyone.

On the other hand, we have only to look at Friday's announcement by Hostess Brands that it is liquidating the company after failing to come to terms with striking members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union to see that these warnings can be real and such stories often have grim endings.

Futile or not, you have to start somewhere and at some time. The Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago will resume Fight for 15 protests on the Magnificent Mile the day after Thanksgiving.

Full-metal Neil

Here's Neil Steinberg, reflecting in the last chapter of his latest book on being a columnist:

"How lucky I am to be able to do something I love, to write about things I am interested in, to set my own routine. … It might end any time — no one's future is certain, particularly not in newspapering, which seems to teeter and tremble at the precipice. At times it feels like I'm only spooning tomato soup at an outdoor restaurant on a cliff side that's crumbling into the sea. Every now and then another table or a few chairs clatter over the edge and I look up at the sound, startled, then sigh and go back to my soup. Sure, I could get up and leave the restaurant. I should. I must. But the truth is, I've been here for so long that I don't know where else to go — there might not be any place for me to go — and the soup is still right there, in front of me, for the moment. And it's good soup."

Steinberg writes for the Chicago Sun-Times, lives in the suburbs and loves opera and cigars. I write for the Tribune, live in the city and have no use for opera or cigars.

But we're friends, in part because we have several things in common: We're politically liberal, we're both sons of retired physicists and we both think Neil Steinberg is brilliant.

I'll accede instantly to most of the criticisms leveled at him — he's a difficult character, a prickly, blunt caldron of insecurity and arrogance who has said and done things he shouldn't have.

These flaws and more are on display in "You Were Never in Chicago," a memoir interwoven with local history that was just published by the University of Chicago Press. But so is his curiosity, insight, amusing self-awareness and enormous talent.

It's good soup.

Avoid this fowl usage

Please, my friends, if you are my friends, try to get through Thanksgiving week without once referring to the holiday as "Turkey Day." Even the shorthand "T-day" offends those of us who prefer to keep the focus on gratitude, not the overrated bird.

As one of the commenters at Change of Subject online noted, the Turkey Day designation should be reserved for any day that an Adam Sandler movie is released.